# What is media offloading?

Media offloading means storing your WordPress images and files in cloud storage and serving them to visitors from there, rather than from your web server. It reduces the work and disk your server needs for media. A plugin handles the copying and changes the addresses your pages use.

## Why people do it

Media tends to be the largest part of a WordPress site. A growing library fills your server's disk and makes backups slower. Sending every image also uses your server's bandwidth. Cloud storage is built for holding and sending many files, and you can put a CDN in front of it.

## What can go wrong

Offloading adds a step where a file can go missing. An upload may fail, or a thumbnail may be created after the upload. If a site points at a file that never arrived, visitors see a broken image. If local copies were deleted too, there may be nothing to fall back on.

## What it doesn't do

Offloading doesn't by itself make images smaller. It also doesn't back up your site, because your database and theme stay on your server. And a file in the cloud still costs money to store and send, so compare provider prices.

## How Offloft handles this

Offloft checks every file in your bucket before your site uses it, and keeps your local copies unless you choose Offloft Pro's safe removal. Normal offloading doesn't change your database, so you can go back. If Pro removed local copies, bring them back first. See [how verification works](/verification).

Updated 2026-11-06.

Source: https://www.offloft.com/docs/glossary/media-offloading